Johan U., Sweden

Hi -just wanna let you know how satisfied I am with this course. I can’t believe I am at lesson 24 and I simply enjoy. Yesterday I had a short conversation on a flight with a Chinese stewardess – it works, she understood! Thanks for precise lessons with humourous remarks put in for good measure. All the best and keep up the good work!


Gareth D, Professor, Sydney, Australia

I am just learning Chinese as a hobby, really. In my job (I teach and research Biochemistry at Sydney University) I come across a lot of Chinese people (both fellow scientists and students) and, although they all speak perfect English, it is a good ice-breaker and much appreciated if I have a go with my Mandarin! However, some of my more cynical colleagues think I’m only learning so that I can tell what the students in the front row of my lecture are saying about my classes 🙂

I have been learning for about 6 months… I really like the way your course is ‘progressive’… it really gives me a strong sense of progression and achievement… I particularly like the use of the Chinese ‘links’ within in the lessons (ie, the padding between the sentences in the formal dialog). I like the way that you refer back to previous lessons… this provides both reassurance and a chance for revision… as well as a strong sense of continuity.

I am very much enjoying working my way though all the lesson transcripts. They are a really fantastic resource… I think I am learning just as much from the ‘padding’ that accompanies the explanations and introductions to each sentence as I am from the dialogues themselves. I think that this is because there is a lot of reinforcement of the ‘teaching phrases’ from one lesson to the next, so eventually it becomes ‘fluent’ for me.

Apart from the export feature (which is absolutely fantastic!) I am enjoying the videos. It is surprising just how much difference there is between an audio dialog and a video… Of course, it is easier to interpret the big-picture of what is happening from the video but it is also more challenging with the actors speaking so naturally and with all the other bits of visual information that one’s brain tries to process at the same time. In short, I think the videos are a perfect complement to the dialogs.

There’s no doubt that all aspects of my learning have massively increased since I started learning the characters… so I think that anything you can do to encourage your students to take an interest in writing and reading the characters will be very positive!

I’m just at the stage where the complexity of the ‘incidental’ Chinese used in the lessons is now just as useful as the official lesson dialog! (ie, about lesson 100-120 or so)… So you’ve clearly thought out your business model very well… get everyone ‘hooked’ on the first episodes and then they can’t resist!

Cheerio, and thanks for a great course which I am enjoying very much!


Johannes H., Munich, Germany

Starting with your lesson 001 presently I am following lessons 80 to 90.

My learning procedure (for the time being on PC only)
– listen the vocabulary (at Pinyin mode, fast dialog)
– listen the vocabulary (at Pinyin mode, Kirin)
– listen the vocabulary and try to read Simplified mode ( fast dialog)
– if necessary: listen single lines and try to learn by heart

– listen (and read) Complete Lesson, especially for additional explanations and background information.
– listen and answer Premium podcast

For my learning, the most useful Features are the Premium Podcasts. Being forced to check the active vocabulary and translate sentences into Chinese brings the best progress to me. I even would like to have such features become more extensive and maybe already included in the “Vocabulary.” I am looking forward to progress to lesson 116, because from there on all features are also available in Simplified Hanzi.

Thank you very much for your kind attention and best wishes for the further success with this helpful program.


Fernando M., Brazil

I’m a new user of your fantastic website. I’m a brazilian native, that is now perceiving the increasement of coorporations seaching people that knows the chinese language to work. I don’t have a job and it is the reason of my interest about learning chinese. I hope that I can complete this course with your help.


Milan, Czech Republic

Hello Kirin and Adam and all the Chinese Track team-members! I have been learning Chinese with you for approx. one month and it has been a great fun! I´ve always wanted to learn this language and your site has been most helpful! I am a beginner, with no previous Chinese-learning experience, have gone through the first 11 Chinese Track lessons so far. Chinese seemed an impossibly difficult language to me, but thanks to your course, the use of the latin characters and the listening, I can see now that it is reachable. Thanks!
All the best for you


Manuela B., Switzerland

I discovered your website in January, started from lesson 1 and tried to catch up as fast as possible (sometimes 4-5 hours a day) – and exactly today I’m there, lesson 198!!! You did a great job referring the method (from explaining in english turning to more and more chinese or how you choose new vocabulary and repeat it) and you found a nice balance of explaining grammar or just take an expression as it is. I know, it can be difficult, because students want more and more explanation, but sometimes it makes the stuff too complicate and becomes a barrier for the fluency.

Now I’m really happy, that I found a way to keep going and to improve my listening and speaking skills. I really like the videos and dialogues. I know, it was not that difficult for me, because I know most of the characters from last year; and I have now to take care, that I don’t lose track with the new stuff. But you are a big motivator and so I’m looking forward learning more..

I mostly listen first to the new lesson to see, how much I understand just by listening (because I’m quite bad at the “tingli”-part in the HSK-exercises, but it’s such a good feeling, when you listen to native speakers and you actually understand, what they are talking about!). After this first highlight or frustration I print the simplified version and go through it once or twice (bian ting bian kan), look then at the notes (I also like cultural notes) and go sometimes to the vocabulary section and pick some exercices (word order!!) or listen there a few times to (for me) new expressions to get used to the right tones. At last I go to the premium pages, listen to the second dialogue and try the translations – actually as a last test. And then – I enjoy the video (when there is/was one – you see I miss them).

On the whole it works pretty well like that. But you know the feeling for sure: You always get the idea, that as soon as you “turn around” all chinese just falls out of your brain… I guess we are now on a level, where we understand quite a lot (above all when it’s written down – for me in simplified characters), but when it comes to talk and build our own sentences, it gets bad. So I need (!) the sentence-builder-exercises and translation-part to reassure myself.

I’m recommending your website to all my friends – there’s kind of a podcast hype starting in Switzerland and an increasing interest here in China’s language and culture. A really nice thing!


Coline B., Lawyer, Paris, France

Chinese Track is progressive so it helps reminding the bases and the written language (thanks to the new feature that teaches how to write the characters). It is also a real online “tutor”, and everyone knows that repetition is the only way to learn a foreign language with efficiency. I also use Chinesepod as a complement for spoken language. I think these two chinese podcasts should not be considered as competitors, but as complementary tools. I hadn’t spoken chinese for three years until I found your website. I am so happy to recover my former level and even more. Kirin is really a fantastic teacher (One on One). Thanks.


Elie B., Belgium

Just want to say you’re doing a wonderful job here!

I’ve lived in Beijing for a year, but since I’m back home last summer and started working, I didn’t find the time to study Chinese anymore. Thanks to your podcast I’m picking it up again.

Keep up the great work.


Michel L., Teacher, Quebec, Canada

Hi Adam. Just a few words to tell you that I appreciate the New Characters feature. With the translation, the Test your pronunciation, the Sentence Builder, and the sound features all on the same page, it makes a very nice package. I also like the worksheet. Thanks for your nice work.


Gary S., Teacher, Taipei, Taiwan

I checked out your site recently and saw the site was on level 3. I tried out the premium features and found them quite useful. Kirin and Rapheal are also fantastic. They speak very clearly. I’m listening to your podcast when I’m on the run, walking around town, on the MRT, Bus, etc.

I’m looking forward to level 4. I think you all did a wonderful job on the level three lessons. The audio is clear, the native speakers are excellent, and the content is VERY well managed. I really like the way that you alternate between dialogs (which you break down and slow down) and full conversations between Kirin and Raphael. The way you’ve slowly weaned out the English and explain everything in simple Chinese is wonderful. It’s really great to get a solid 10 minutes of Chinese without having to flip back into “English Mode” all the time. I’ve been recommending the podcast to everyone I know who’s trying to learn Chinese. In level four it would be great to see even more of that in the premium podcasts. For instance asking the listeners to give you a sentence with the opposite meaning of Chinese sentence, etc…

For the past couple of months I’ve just been listening to the 2 podcasts. I often hit the site while I’m waiting for the bus and read a quick couple of lessons. Great little gadget 🙂


Chinesisch Lernen Blog

(Comment in German):

Ich bin immer mehr von Chinese Track begeistert.

Inzwischen gibt es nicht nur den Podcast, den Dialog, den Dialog mit Nachsprechpausen, die Vokabelliste als Download, sondern auch PDFs (Englisch, Pinyin, Simp. und trad. Zeichentext, sowie Lerntips). Und natürlich Videos, Flashcards, Wordbank, Exercises. Momentan 172 Lektionen!

Das Lernen macht wirklich Spaß mit CLO! Und daß alles etwas mehr Taiwan-orientiert ist als bei ChinesePod (alles sehr VRC-orientiert und mit einer Vorliebe für die vereinfachten Zeichen), finde ich mehr als klasse! Super!

Im Gegensatz zu ChinesePod kann man hier Schritt für Schritt seine Kenntnisse aufbauen und braucht sich nicht mit den Schwierigkeiten und Lücken beim Sprung von einem Level zum nächsten (bei ChinesePod) herumquälen! Das empfinde ich als einen der größten Nachteile bei ChinesePod, neben dem ziemlich hohen Preis!

You can read the complete post (in German) here.


Gilla E., Translator, Germany

I’ve been following your Chinese course for several months now (I am on lesson 22)and I recommended it to other learners since it’s the most professional course I could find on the internet. The course is highly systematic and, at each step, motivating.

I really enjoy your way teaching Chinese. It’s so helpful to hear/read how you are breaking the sentences down and how you repeat words and phrases of former lessons etc. and I can see the difference from books and DVDs I had bought before I found your course: Your teaching method is worth the subscription fee!


Joe H., Circus Performer, Massachusetts, USA

Your website and podcast have been extremely helpful to me in my recent trips to China. I’ve become a premium subscriber because it’s been so useful. I’ve tried several other Chinese language resources,but have found yours to be the best.

I am a performer and I decided that since I would be spending so much time in China, it would be nice to learn some of the language. I thought it would be respectful to at least try, and based on my experience, the Chinese people love it when Americans try and speak their language. I managed to learn to speak 90% of my act in Mandarin.

Regarding your course, I am relatively new to it, and am only on lesson 17. I must confess that I skipped around a little to learn words that I knew I needed right away. But I am going back to make sure I have the previous lessons learned before I get too far ahead of myself. I like the approach of breaking down words to their roots. it has helped me with cab drivers, restaurant workers, store owners etc. One thing I found out by being in China and trying to get around, is that when I am shopping, shopkeepers will take out calculators to show you the price they are asking, and then I can take the calculator to make a counter offer. So learning all the numbers up to 1000 wasn’t as urgent to me as some other things. But you can only learn what it is you need to know by being in China, (or Taiwan). There is no substitute for jumping right in and trying to make yourself understood. After that, try to understand what people are saying to you, then try and understand what they are saying to each other. I had just started picking up things that people would say to me when I left. It was so much fun ! A cab driver told me my Chinese was very good, I was so happy to hear that, and understand what he said. A lot of the people in our group would ask me to go with them, because I could translate a little for them. I would also suggest to your listeners to try and learn a few phrases in the local dialect. When I said Thank You, Your Welcome, Hello and Good Bye in Shanghai Dialect, the people loved it ! It made feel good as well. A simple act of respect can go a long way.

I think the difficulty between lessons is OK. As in learning anything, practice, practice, practice. Without practice, it doesn’t matter how much or how little the difficulty increases, you won’t learn anything. I am fortunate in that I have been going to China, so I have a need and a place to speak what I learn. There is a Chinatown in Boston, near where I live, so I may go there to try and to speak some Chinese. ( I tried to speak Chinese to some people I’ve run into, but there are a lot of Vietnamese people around here, and I’ve embarrassed myself a few times. I can’t tell what part of Asia people are from by sight.) I will also be going back in February and May of next year. Hopefully I’ll be much further along in your excellent course.

I like your course because of the way the words are broken down to their roots. I like the fact that they are always broken down, even if you’ve already explained it 3 times in previous lessons. It’s hard to fall behind with your course. I like the way you explain which tones are being used. Like I mentioned, I’m a little hard of hearing, and I haven’t developed an ear for the tones yet, so for you to tell us which one it was is very helpful. You must be a very patient man to go over things so thoroughly. I like the support materials for premium subscribers. Again, I need to see the words, it helps me remember them. The practice exercises are helpful as well.

One thing that I do to help me learn is to have an imaginary conversation with someone, could be a bus driver, or a cab driver, store owner, person attending the festival and try to uses as many words as possible. That’s one way I discover what I haven’t learned yet, but need to know.

Keep up the good work. I think you’ve helped a lot of people learn what they once thought to be a difficult language.


Due East Blog

…I think the podcasts are really good. The grammar explanations are well done, they give good attention to teaching proper tones, and the subject matter of the lessons is on par with what Chinese Pod covers. They certainly don’t cut any corners. And since the teachers aren’t all from just the mainland or just from Taiwan, listeners are exposed to the slight accent, vocabulary, and tonal differences they’re likely to encounter in their daily encounters with Chinese people from different areas of the world. That’s a big advantage that this site has over Chinese Pod because not everybody who speaks a given language speaks it with exactly the same accent. So the more exposure you get to different regional accents, the better your listening comprehension will be. You still won’t get as much exposure to as wide a range of [bad] Chinese accents as you’re likely to encounter in real life, but that’s actually a good thing; you don’t want to learn sloppy Chinese, anyway. It’s a difficult thing to achieve balance between exposing students to what they’ll encounter in real life and teaching them correctly, and they do a good job with it. It could potentially prove a bit confusing to beginners, but as long as they keep in mind that the differences are simply a matter of accent, they’ll be just fine…

You can read the complete review here.


Adrian K., I.T. and Business Consultant, Singapore

I’ve been learning Chinese characters for a couple of years (after I learned Japanese for a while). Reading simplified characters is therefore relatively easy for me, but there is a big gap to my listening and speaking skills, incl. usage of grammar.

What I like most about Chinese Track is really the English-to-Chinese practice, something others (incl. ChinesePod) don’t have enough of even though it is THE key skill I believe. The more is really the better here. I just feel the CT approach is more organized, at least it helped me more.

The other good thing about Chinese Track is the gradual phasing in of Chinese conversation into the lessons. I think you are doing it right. Example: For texts that I would easily understand from its written form (Simplified) but never if spoken, I get a chance to grasp the listening comprehension because you have both the natural and the slowed-down version. Other example: Lower-level lessons may be very easy for me if I read the text, but they are just the right level (short with very common words) to train my listening comprehension.

Bottom-line: I find multiple levels of CT a good fit, depending on the focus I want to place.


Alex T., Student, Durham, NC, USA

Thank you! I tried a lot of Chinese learning programs before finding your site (ChinesePod, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone) but none of them really worked too well for me. Some went too slow, some went too fast, some just kept you stuck at the same level. Chinese Track really teaches Chinese at a great pace, with short lessons, and progressively. I love that every week you can get better and better and never feel like the jump from one lesson to the next is too big.

So far, the premium services are great! I think if there’s one thing that the original podcasts lacked, it was an opportunity to practice producing the language, which the review podcasts and practice exercises do wonderfully.


Anesia R., Communications Manager, Ministry of Tourism, Youth and Sport, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

My name is Anesia and I am a participant in Taiwan ICDF workshop on Community development and the Tourism Industry. Today, I’m writing to you to thank you for your site where one can learn chinese. A friend from St. Vincent introduced me to it while I was at home because I wanted to be able to say a few words in mandarin while here in Taiwan.

Well, I can truly say that your site has helped me. I don’t know a lot of chinese but my pronounciation seems to be spot on! At least, these are the comments I get from the Taiwanese every time I say something in Chinese. recently, each participant had to give a country report and I thought it would be a good idea to introuce myself-my name, say hello and my nationality in all 4 main languages represented among us: Mandarin, Spanish, French and English. I did it and was met with a big applause from the Taiwanese. Now, I know they are often happy to hear even just a small word in Mandarin but it was more than that for me. They told me on more than one occassions now that my pronounciation was very good and wanted to know where I had learnt Mandarin. I was happy to tell them about your site.

I’m so busy at work that I didn’t have alot of time to learn Mandarin from your site but I put alot of effort in when I did go through the lessons. So once again Adam, thank you! And may God continue to help you as you seek to help others develop their Mandarin speaking skills.


David C., High School Teacher, Los Angeles, United States

What you are doing right and the others aren’t is two fold.

First of all, you have a progressive series. A person can actually start from the beginning and work their way up to a conversational level. All the words are accounted for. You remind people of what is new and what has been covered already. You remind them in Chinese and use English sparingly.

This is the way that it should be done. After the initial stages, a language should be taught in the target language as much as possible.

The second thing is that lessons are introduced in Chinese. It isn’t until new words are introduced that English is heard. This puts the person in Chinese mode.


Karan M., Student, Stanford University, United States

I stumbled upon this excellently programmed podcast back in Spring and I am ever so glad that I did, because I think it is one of the major reasons for my improved listening ability. One of the things I believe Stanford’s program doesn’t get right is the listening speed. We learnt grammar properly, vocabulary was good and we spoke about as fast as beginners at our level ought to, but we sucked at listening. This is because the teacher always spoke at a slower-than-normal speed which we could easily understand. In fact, when she sped up just a little bit, most of the class stopped understanding what she was saying. Also, when we heard our teacher talking with other native speakers, it felt so uncomfortably fast that it sounded like a whole other language. Basically, the course did not place enough emphasis on listening exercises.

This is where Chinese Track excels because the best and most useful feature of the podcasts, I believe, is the dialogue at normal speed. The average podcast goes like this: conversation at normal speed (basically, fast), conversation at slowed down speed, conversation explained at slowed down speed. In the average podcast, I tend to grasp all the general meaning and 80-90% of the exact meaning during the normal section, and by the end of the slow speed section, I’ve usually grasped 100% of the exact meaning. Occasionally, I stop listening to the podcast at this point because the explanations are unnecessary. However, this proficiency is something that I have developed since June with Chinese Track’s help. One of the key aspects of the dialogues in the podcasts is that each of them introduces only about three or four new words every lesson and this actually makes it possible for students to understand most of the content. Another is that all the explanation is done, as much as possible, using Chinese, and this has gradually increased as the course has progressed. For one, this makes the student feel better (or, cooler) and just immerses the student in a complete Chinese environment for a few minutes.


Jan K., Statistical Consultant, United States

This course is a fabulous way to learn a language. Adam is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable teacher who has used his computer programming skills to present an entertaining and reasonably priced course. He has truly leveraged the internet to present a variety of teaching aids, such as being able to choose translations, Chinese characters, or pinyin – with a mouse over effect of getting 2 of the 3 possibilities. So if you choose Chinese characters, placing the mouse over the characters will provide pinyin as a highlighted callout below the Chinese characters. This allows one to practice reading Chinese characters with a quick pinyin translation if you get stuck. Adam has thought of things that are important and made adjustments to suggestions. One feature that I like is that one can easily increase the size of the Chinese characters. I also find useful the premium podcast reviews. I have tried other methods but this method is by far the best. I have even put the website on my cell phone!


Jeff W., Businessman, United States

Dear Fellow Mandarin Chinese Students, I am a US businessman studying Mandarin Chinese.
I highly recommend Chinese Track. I tried several online Mandarin Chinese courses. I found Chinese Track to be by far the best. This podcast will help you learn Chinese quickly and efficiently.


Tom, Manchester, United Kingdom

Anyone considering learning Mandarin should seriously consider signing up for this course and becoming a premium subscriber.

There are many good books, CDs, and websites out there that teach Mandarin but this course beats them all.

The founder of the website, Adam Menon genuinely wants to help people learn Chinese. Since Adam is a non-native Chinese speaker, he has an appreciation of the problems non-native speakers of Chinese have in trying to learn Chinese. I feel his teaching methods are more appropriate that say a Chinese academic who decides to write a book on how to learn Chinese. What may seem obvious to us in our own language may not be so obvious for a foreign person trying to learn our language.

The course is aimed at absolute beginners to intermediate level speakers. As the weeks pass the material of the later lessons on the site will gradually increase in difficulty and eventually it will include material for more advanced speakers.

Structure of the course

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At the time of writing, the course consists of 132 lessons divided into 3 levels with 60 lessons in each level. The course is currently on the 12th lesson of level three.

There is over 27 hours of downloadable audio lessons currently available to premium subscribers and around 40 minutes of new audio is added every week! Three new lessons are provided every week with each lesson lasting on average for about 10 minutes. Premium subscribers also get lesson summaries which are the Chinese parts of the lesson without the English explanations. They also get supplementary audio material which consists of further examples of word usage in different context and question and answer sessions which make you actively think more about what you are learning rather than just passively listening to it.

Teaching method.

———————

The teaching methods used in this course are very effective and are superior to learning from books and CDs. One problem with learning from a book and CD is that the lessons are often too long. It is very discouraging to realise you have to get through 20 pages to finish 1 lesson. Books usually provide you with a few short texts which are covered but not explained on the CD. It is very frustrating to try to keep up with the audio while flicking back and forth through pages a book. Books also provide you with a long list of supplementary words that are not covered in the CDs and sometimes these words don’t appear anywhere else in the book. One of the biggest problems with learning from books is that they confuse you with strict grammar rules and technical linguistic terms that require you to have a PhD in linguistics to understand them.

This course gets around these problems brilliantly. Since the lessons are short, learning never becomes a chore. The material is wide and varied and never becomes dull like the predictable stories of students in a university that most books use as their lesson topics. Each lesson will provide you with around 5 new words or phrases, so you are not overburdened with long lists of vocabulary. Words used in earlier lessons are repeatedly used in later lessons. It is this continual usage of words that allows you to memorize them and learn them by heart. Adam gives the translations and explanation in each course and he uses native Mandarin speakers such as Kirin for the Chinese Dialogue. Kirin has one of the clearest voices I have every heard. Since you can clearly hear everything she says this helps enormously. Other native Chinese speakers from various parts of China are also used in the lessons. Some speakers are easier to understand than others, but that is life. Adam is trying to get the listeners to cope with the different dialects that they will hear, so it is a great feature of the course.

The course does cover some grammar where necessary, but the main philosophy of the course is to teach listeners to develop an instinctive feel for when something sounds right or wrong. This can only be done by repetitive listening and using words in context. That is how we learned our own language from being very young. We can all understand, speak and write our own language, but not many of us could write down the grammar rules of our language. The fact is that when speaking and listening in any language, you just don’t have time to apply grammar rules. We need to learn Chinese words to a level where we know their meaning without converting it into our own language. If we find that when we are communicating in Chinese and we are translating what is said in our heads into English, then that is too slow and we would miss most of the conversation.

All the audio lessons and premium lessons are downloadable, so you can listen to them anywhere and anytime you want. It is considerably better than struggling with a book and CD!

Other material and resources

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The course also provides a plethora of material for premium subscribers.

1. Premium subscribers can view and print the full lesson transcripts, lesson dialogue and lesson summaries in English, Pinyin, Simplified characters and Traditional characters! This is brilliant. I don’t know any other course that provides this amount of supplementary material in all four formats.

2. A searchable word bank containing all the words and phrases from all the lessons. Again this can be viewed in English, pinyin, simplified and traditional characters. The databank can be searched in many ways including type, so if you search for hotel, you will get all the words and phrases related to hotels, such as booking a room etc.

3. A very useful on-line flash card system so you can test your pinyin, Chinese character recognition and listening skills.

4. Some lessons are accompanied with short videos

Summary

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You can spend a lot more money than it would cost to subscribe to this course on a much inferior course. The premium subscription is worth it for the pinyin and Chinese character lesson transcripts alone. When you include the many other resources such as the word bank, flashcard system and premium pod casts then it is an absolute bargain. If you are not sure whether to subscribe or not, then you can tryout all the premium content for the first 4 lessons of each level for free.

This is a progressive course in many ways. There is an increase of difficulty from one level to the next, as each level uses more Chinese. However at no time do you ever feel lost. Every single new word is explained and reused in later lessons. Since the lessons are of good quality, short and varied, you will want to listen to them again and again.

The course is also progressive as hardly a week goes by without a tweak, to an existing feature or an addition of a new feature which make the course even better.


Marc H., Belgium

Your website is not my only source for learning Chinese, but I find it very, very useful. I like the structured approach because it is reassuring and my progress sn more or less measurable. And I am confident that by sticking with your program my Chinese will get better all the time. You do a great job and I am learning a lot with your lessons.


Christopher A., Teacher, Nanjing, China

I’m sure you’re a busy guy so I don’t want to take up too much of your time… but I did want to say how impressed I am as I explore your website. I am a recent arrivee in Nanjing, where I hope to spend the rest of my life!! I’ve been here six weeks, will be in Nanjing teaching for at least this coming school year, and I love the Chinese people… but I don’t know more than two or three words of Chinese! So I’ve been looking for a self-teaching program and have explored Pimsleur, Interactive Chinese from Sinolingua, New Approaches to Learning Chinese, etc. and just didn’t find them practical as primary resource. I really like your approach and I’m looking forward to taking advantage of all your resources and “gettin’ with the program!”

Thanks for your efforts… I can tell you’re working hard at this!


Graham A., Queensland, Australia

Hi guys. I’m subscribed to your course and making good progress. I congratulate you highly on this course. I’ve studied many languages in many ways, and I think you have a very effective product here. I can learn Chinese from this!!

I’ve been working onwards in your course, and I studied up to about lesson 90 in detail. Not that I remember all of the
content of course, but I found that by pushing on forwards, things that had come up before that I didn’t remember too well at first came up again, and so were easier to remember.

As I said before, I think it is an excellent course, and I saw that you made it better and better as you went along. Thanks again for your great work on the course.


Bryan H., Software Engineer, United States

I decided to start learning Chinese about 11 months ago. I’m doing it mostly for fun and personal satisfaction. I find the culture and language very interesting and would love to be able to take a trip some day. I would like to eventually be fluent, so I will keep on truckin’. Until the last few weeks, I have mostly concentrated on listening and speaking but now have the bug to start working on the characters and have started learning them.

I have noticed that you’re often quick to implement nice changes in functionality on your site and also that you seem to be methodically keeping a database of what words are used in what lessons so as to point out to the user where to go for earlier lessons. I’ve been quite busy lately, so mostly I’ve just been listening to your podcasts (both regular and review/premium) on my commute. It will be interesting to see how far you can take this progression. Will I someday be hearing you say, “Welcome to Lesson 987”?

It’s nice to see all of the improvements you keep making to the site and the course itself. I hope you’ll keep up the good work and I look forward to trying out some of the newer features.


Viravadee C., Management Consultant, Business Owner, Bangkok, Thailand

Wow, such a great way to learn mandarin.

I have been taking a formal Mandarin class for a few months, and I am currently using your course as an add-on to my formal Mandarin class. And I have found that your program really helps me a great deal. I am learning faster than ever!

1. I have found that the best way to learn a new language fast is to focus on listening and speaking. While my formal class focuses on speaking and writing, your podcast program really helps me with my listening skills. It’s a really great combination.

2. Your being very systematic and organized really makes it easy to follow through the lessons.
* The way you structure your class is excellent! I really like the way you gradually build up the dialogue from class to class. (This is infact, the main reason I subscribe to your site.) As such, listening to a phrase or a conversation (over and over and over again) makes me remember a new vocab better than remembering a word without a context or just reading the books. I usually listen to each class more than once just to get the phrases into my head.
* Also I appreciate you trying to show us different accents and phrases from each region. (e.g.Taiwan..vs.. mainland.). Its very useful.
* Also, your website is easy to navigate and very simple and clean. (There is no need to fancy it up. Simplicity sells.)
* SO Please continue to be simple, organized and effective!

Thank you again for such a wonderful job. I really appreciate your efforts. You really make my learning experience a lot nicer. Keep up the good work!

Chinese Track ROCKS!


Wendy L., United Kingdom

I am really enjoying the course and find it very helpful.

It’s a great idea. Here in the UK, it’s difficult to hear Mandarin Chinese spoken if you don’t know Chinese people personally. I am currently enrolled on a Mandarin Chinese course but find it is very book-centred. Writing and reading (pinyin and characters) is not too hard for ‘visual’ learners like myself but if you need practice in hearing the language, Chinese Track is just ideal. Thank you very much for your efforts.


Lina G, Artist, Israel

I am back from China! It was a very surprising and intensive experience. Thanks to you I was able to chat with chinese people, and also and very important, to bargain in the beautiful and colorful markets. No doubt I will renovate my Premium subscription to your site so I will be able to freely talk in my next visit to China.


Scott C., United Kingdom

I first sampled this site by listening and learning through the non-premium feeds, and i learnt so much just through that, now i am premium subscriber, my learning has now rocketed. Your user friendly and cheerful mid lesson banter adds a more approachable feeling to learning, making a difficult language not such daunting task to do.

After checking out the first 2-3 lessons, i developed an instant interest in what your site has to offer, i then sampled more of the non-premium lessons, then finally decided to apply for the premium package, so i consider myself lucky that i found a perfect learning site without having to wade through any other sites that could knock my interest back a few steps with excessively difficult high tier business level learning.

In terms of directing the course better, i have no issues at all with your lessons, you come across as easy going and friendly towards the listener, and add different speakers to the courses, while covering topics are easily applicable to everyday friendly chit chat to friends or even strangers, thus giving us listeners more confidence, because if you was to ever to get me to speak a word in chinese to anyone, chances where id make you wait about 2 hours so i can overcome my embaressment before muttering a few words under my breath, now after your course, i feel more confident and have shown my competence thus far to my chinese friends, and they all seem pretty impressed, i also showed your site to them, and they also believe your site could render an opposite course effect by helping chinese speakers learn english also, maybe thats another intention you have, maybe not, but either way, its very clever of you. My kindest gratitude to all on the team for this superb course.